Transcript of Senator Gallego on Trump’s Mental Decline During Shutdown

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As Donald Trump's dark past is surfacing, the House GOP and Donald Trump are keeping the government shut down to protect pedophiles. It's a direct post from Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego. The facts bear that out. Refusing to swear in Adalita Grijalva, Arizona's Congresswoman-elect, from the seventh Congressional district is what MAGA Mike Johnson and the MAGA Republicans are doing now. At the same time, they refuse to swear her in. There was a hearing before the Senate Committee where they brought in Attorney General Pam Bondi. Here's what Senator Whitehouse asked her if the FBI found photographs of Donald Trump, that Trump's biographer, and someone who is potentially going to be Epstein's biographer, a guy by the name of Michael Wolf, said that Epstein told him that there were these photos of Donald Trump and little girls of indeterminate age or girls of unclear age that potentially were kept in a safe, unclear if those exist or not. Wolf said that that's what Epstein told him. Senator Whitehouse asked the question of Bondi today. Here, play this clip. Did the FBI find those photographs that have been discussed publicly by a witness who claimed Jeffrey Epstein showed them to him?

You don't know anything about that? Okay. Senator Durban then asked this question to Pam Bondi. Let's play it.

The quarrel with you is to read somebody that you mentioned I never heard of. Reid Hoffman. So who gave the order to flag records related to President Trump?

To flag records for President Trump?

To flag any records which included his name.

I'm not going to discuss anything about that with you, Senator.

Eventually, you're going to have to answer for your conduct in this. You won't do it today, but eventually you will.

My Pam Bondi impression. Who are you talking about? What are you talking about? Why do we want to talk about anything right there. I'm not answering any question. Reid Hoffman. I'm just going to start. Antifa. I'm going to start saying names. Then here when Maggie Mike Johnson was asked about swearing in Adelita Grijalva from Arizona's seventh Congressional district, who would lend her name to become the 218 signature on that discharge petition to then have a vote to release the Epstein files. He just walks away. Here, play this clip. Congress and get everybody back to work. I certainly pray We can hope that they will do that, and they don't drag this on for political purposes. Thank you all so much. Mr. Speaker, when will you sling in Ms. Griehalva?

You saw right there the house floor. Maggie sent the people home on vacation. He said, Go take a paid vacation. We're not even going to speak with Democrats, let alone negotiate with them. Horrible. Let's bring in Arizona Senator Rubin Gallego. Senator Gallego, great to see you. You wrote, House GOP is Keeping the government shut down to protect pedophiles. It's like an accurate statement, sir. What do you make of what's going on?

I mean, if this was on the other foot, and this was Democrats doing this, the right would be losing their minds. The fact is, Mike Johnson is keeping the government closed to protect some of the most powerful men, not just Donald Trump, in the world from being exposed as pedophiles. They're willing to also not just keep government shut. What does that mean? They're going to mess with our travel. They're going to mess with pay. They're going to mess with the ACA tax credits to make insurance cheaper for 24 million Americans. And they're doing it because they're afraid what's going to come out. It astounds me the sheer amount of bullshit that we're all dealing with right now and the fact that this guy, Speaker Johnson, will go on camera and say that the Democrats are the problem. We have no one to negotiate with. You mentioned Donald Trump is half the time on the golf course. Mike Johnson is half the time hiding and or avoiding putting the Congress back into session. And so essentially, we only have the senators to talk about, and we're the problems here. We're the problems here. This is the worst written West Wing script I've ever seen at this point.

It would be parody if it wasn't so real and impacting our lives. You talk about Dementia Donald. Yesterday, he was pretending that there were negotiations taking place with Democrats. I guess they've moved off of their talking points of blaming migrants that wasn't working. And transgender people from Peru, that wasn't sticking. So now he went with, this is about health care. He said yesterday in the oval office, and we're negotiating very big things about Hamas, health care, Hamas, health care. That's what he said yesterday. I guess the word H went into his mind, so he went there. But he said that they're negotiating. I spoke with Leader Jeffrey's. I spoke with Leader Schumer. They both did interviews here. They go, We don't know what he's talking. They're doing no... They're not even here. What in the world are they talking? I mean, that in and of itself should be a major three-alarm plan. Yeah.

I mean, even when Donald Trump is in DC, he's not really mentally in DC. So we don't know who negotiate with. And fact is, we're getting closer to November first. Open enrollment happens then. Donald Trump has never dealt with insurance personally. He's never bought insurance. He's never had to go and figure out what insurance rates really are. He's always had someone doing that from. And you have Speaker Johnson and Leader Thun that know that. So they know how to manipulate this man. They have a goal. They want to destroy the ACA. Russ Vot also is able to manipulate this President, too. And the President, really, at the end of the day, All he cares about is destroying the legacy of Obamacare, and 24 million Americans are going to suffer because of that. 24 million Americans are going to see their rate increase doubled. In Arizona, a family of four is going to see their premiums increased by almost $4,400. If you are a swing Republican in a swing district in an off-year election, why are you falling on this sword for this guy who's clearly checked out and needs to be probably put into some type of treatment program for whatever dementia he has, for Johnson, who comes from one of the safest districts in the country who's covering for pedophiles, and for John Thune, who is in there for six years, and he is not worried about members of Congress.

But you have all these members of Congress that are diving themselves on the sword. For what? At the end of the day, they're going to end up losing their elections for something they could have easily affixed with just a simple compromise.

You hit on something that I hadn't even thought of, for what? They don't know what they're doing because it also seems that the shutdown has at least either exasperated or it's probably more shed a light on Donald Trump's cognitive decline in the sense that he's not there to provide any guidance or anything. And Maga, Mike, is just waiting for his orders. Thun has compromised the old Thun that he pretended to be, unfortunately. And so they don't know what to do. So they're out there. Mike Johnson this morning, he's like, I read a headline, and I haven't been read in on it. The headline did say that furloughs may be something, but I did read this, but we're going to have... You read a headline, that's your press conference that you read a headline before you gave a press conference. You're the speaker of the House. What the hell are you talking about? But you're right. I mean, it's because Trump's out there speaking nonsense sense about Trump 2028 hats in the oval office.

Yeah, I think they're trying to be asked their way through this and hoping that them being able to keep talking to their MAGA base will actually solve this problem. The problem is it doesn't. At the end of the day, when people have to sign up to get insured again next year, this is when all reality hits. And the people that get affected the most, by the way, with these ACA cuts are actually in Trump country. So you could deny, you could lie, and you could even have some of your lives be believed by your base. But fact is, insurance premiums go up. People got to cut checks. Everything's really damn expensive right now. And Your lies then all of a sudden become a liability. And the worst, again, is someone like Mike Johnson is putting his swing seat members in trouble. Marjorie Chela Green, for fuck's sakes, is smarter about this. She literally has said, I hate the ACA. I wish the ACA didn't exist, but there's no way I'm going to vote to increase the premiums of my constituents. Smart move. And yet you have people like Juan Siscamani who wins by a couple of thousand votes, a couple of other members of Congress win by a couple of thousand votes that are literally marching themselves onto the gallows just because they just have zero opportunity nor really courage to step away away from their leadership from Donald Trump.

And it's just dumb. In what world are you willingly voting to increase the premiums of your constituents in this year, of all years, when people are paying extra for everything, and you as an elected official are going to actually add more cost to your constituents? Good luck explaining that.

I want to ask you about Donald Trump's speech before the Navy. You're a veteran. Donald Trump is very crazy. He goes out there and he's like, We were too woke after World War II. And then he attacks the troops in front of the Navy and starts saying incorrectly, though, that we've lost all of you. You lost this war, that war, this war because of your wokeness. You posted, The man who never pulled the trigger to defend his country, but sure talks shit like he understands. This is the most dangerous type of military leaders. He's someone who's famously dodged the draft five lying that he had bone spurs, and he's the one attacking veterans right there. It's deeply personal to you as well, I think, in lots of veterans.

It's been personal to me because I was in the Marines. I was in combat, in very heavy combat. I had to make some decisions to save myself, save my Marines. I also conducted myself in the best possible way that abided by the honor of being a Marine. And my Marines did, too. And when you have people like this guy who glamorize the idea of war and think that we should just be able to... Essentially what he's trying to say is just shoot whoever you want and destroy whole cities. I don't want to be part of that military. I don't want to be part of the military that does that type of warfare. The reason I joined the military is because I remember growing up hearing about the Marines of World War II, the Army of World War II, the Marines who had some really hard fights in the Vietnam War, and then the Marines, an army of the Persian Gulf War, who, despite some glaring examples like the Mylik Massacre, stuff like that, the US military does and tries to keep its honor unlike our enemies. And this guy just doesn't understand the impact of war, the impact of ordering these young men and women to do some really horrible things that are against the action human nature.

It's one thing to protect yourself. It's another thing to cause atrocities. He'll never understand that. Number one, because he's a psychopath and can't really have feelings for other people or thoughts for other people. But number Two, because he's never been in that situation. He's a selfish, selfish man. He's never had to deal with the idea of self-sacrifice, the idea of a sacrifice for the greater good of a country or a cause. And I think he looks at our military as a bunch of play toys, and we're not play toys. I live with the consequences of the Iraq war every day. And people like him will never care about people like me. They don't care about the ground pounders. They don't care about the guys that are door kickers, and they care about us in the grand scheme and the idea of it, but they don't understand what we actually usually suffer coming back from wars.

And finally, doesn't it seem like he enjoys this shutdown? It seems that they're I've always had a friend in the past who's no longer a friend who seemed to be happy when things were bad in your life. It was like, Are you happy with the suffering? Everybody knows a part. He seems to find this all funny, the weird sombrero memes, which I know, but he seems to be enjoying this. He called it in a post, a great opportunity. He's playing golf. He's bragging about the gold that's all over the White House on their TikTok account. The The Team Trump account literally posted $100 bills flying around saying, Trump is making it rain on the country. He's talking about $1 commemorative coins. While the American people are suffering, not just from the shutdown, But from the rising prices on affordability across the board, he just seems to be at his most happy place when people are suffering.

It's interesting. I think he's actually is not doing... I don't think mentally he's doing well. I really think he's actually in decline. But number two, I actually do not think he's actually doing it with all this because what I see dealing with a lot of men in power my whole life, what I see is the reaction of a very weak man because he's all over the place with his answers and how to respond to it. Finally, someone's standing up to him. Democratic Party has been unified saying, We're not going to let you cut the insurance of 24 million Americans. And for him, he's very confused the fact that he can't bully his way out of this, that he can't embarrass people out of this, that he can't just snap his finger out of it. And that's why you're seeing him grasping all these different things to help him feel good, to feel like he has some power. What you're seeing is actual weakness. He's scared. He does not know how to get out of this without compromise. And to him, that means that he's going to end looking weak because he started by such a strong stance that says, just open this up.

And for someone like him, it does not come naturally to him. He's always been able to either walk away for all his failed properties, all his jobs, and just bluster his way into the next thing. And this one, he's going to either have to walk away and reinforce one way or the the Affordable Care Act, or he's going to have to shut down. And at some point, some of this starts affecting a lot of what he cares about. So he cares about certain things that he wants to execute. And whether or not the government shut down, eventually that starts having an effect on him. So I read this as an absolute show of weakness, and it does not surprise me that you're going to see him lash out. He's going to keep trying different things because he knows that he has no power in this issue, and he's just trying to figure out how to figure out how he can still look tough and have control when he really doesn't.

Finally, Senator, where do we go from here? What do you see happening next? Does one week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, no king's protest?

This could end tomorrow. Very Very easily. I have zero trust that these guys are going to listen to a CR or budget. If we put a budget together, they're just going to ignore it next year or however long we put a budget together for. They're just going to ignore it. What they can't ignore is once we give the tax credit to American citizens. And so for me, it's very simple. Give my people the tax credits. Give my people their tax credits. It's their money so they could use it to bring down their premiums. At the end of the day. And he can push, he can cry, he could do whatever he wants. But at some point, Johnson is going to have to talk to some of his Republican colleagues. Remember, he only controls the House of Representatives by three And the idea that you're about to send some of your members of Congress into a very hard year after putting a Trump tax on people's insurance, good luck. So if I was them, I would understand that the gig is up, get this deal done, and be able to move on to whatever stupid shit they want to do afterwards.

Senator Ruben Gallagher, thanks for joining us.

Have a good one.

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